Luxuries & Loss: The Oregon Edition
by MissGuenever
Summary: A continuation of the Luxuries and Loss with a dash of Books, and a sprinkle of Cities. Or in less food related terms: An exploration of Eliot's down time, and the highs and lows of having done and seen the things he has.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: I wasn't going to continue this series of ficlets in Portland. But, this story just insisted on being a part of Luxuries and Loss, and not Books or Cities. So here it is, and a huge thank you to **Gaben**, who tirelessly betas my stuff. And to everyone that reads, reviews, and favorites: **ardnaseel**, **Hunt Seat Panhead**, **Sprite91360**, and **WhiskeySkye**! You guys rock my world!

**Luxuries & Loss: The Oregon Edition**

It was a Monday; that meant the brew pub was closed. It was the day that Eliot usually took to get away from the city. Some days he went scouting out new sources for local suppliers: Fruits, vegetables, meats, honey, … Other times he'd sit in his apartment and read, or go hiking, walking, or just for a drive. Today though, it was different. And not different in a bad way. Today Eliot was driving out of the city to visit Ray. Eliot had run into Ray a few times while he'd still been in the Navy, Ray had been Army; a ground-pounder.

The first few times they'd run into each other, Ray had been taking classes to finish his Master's degree, and couldn't stop talking about how he was going to be a music teacher when he got out. He'd even taught a few guys on Eliot's team how to play the guitar. He'd taught Dimple the trumpet; to this day, Eliot couldn't figure out why Dimple wanted to learn how to play the trumpet. He'd helped Eliot, with his guitar playing a few years ago too.

The last time he'd seen Ray had been not too long ago. They'd been on a job north of Portland, and the Ray he'd seen had been a different man. A very different man. Quiet, and kind of withdrawn; very much not the outgoing Army Captain Eliot had known. They'd chatted about really nothing at all; and it had taken a few minutes for it to click. Eliot had finally pieced it together when Ray's German Shepard had leaned into him when a car backfired and caused Ray to start shaking.

Ray had PTSD. And given Petunia, the dog, who by all appearances was very well trained, Ray had it bad. PTSD dogs were only given to soldiers who had severe cases; kind of like seeing-eye dogs. It also explained the little gold colored metal studs in Ray's ears; acupuncture needles. Acupuncture needles which were replaced weekly, indwelling needles was the term if Eliot remembered correctly. He'd read an article on it; Elambert, his massage therapist had emailed to him. Lord, he really missed that woman. But, she was in Massachusetts; and they were now in Oregon.

So now a month later, Eliot was in his truck with the passenger seat full of ingredients to help Ray make a birthday cake for Tamika, his wife. He'd only met her once, while they were on that job. Apparently Tamika was a VA nurse and Ray'd met her there while he was in rehab. Eliot mused about all of the things Ray had told him about Tamika, and their life. They had a place out in the country; because the sounds of the city bothered him too much. They did come into the VA hospital once a week so that Ray and Petunia could meet with their therapist, and he could get his acupuncture needles changed.

Eliot ran through the list of things he'd packed in the apple crate. Confectioner's sugar, never call it powdered sugar, real vanilla extract, and salt. The small cooler he'd stuck on top of the battered crate had heavy cream and butter from the local dairy. The Crisco, and it had to be Crisco, not a generic version was in the crate with the vanilla. He'd even brought a small box of salt. It was a lesson he'd learned when he'd first started cooking: When cooking at a friend's house, never trust that they have a specific ingredient! And one that he'd learned the hard way.

The old apple crate that Eliot had found in the back of the barn in New Hampshire was the real deal. He'd spent most of a day carefully restoring it, sanding a couple of rough spots, replacing a couple of screws, and oiling the dry wood. It was a memory of Boston, of his hideaway in New Hampshire, and the crazy neighbors that went with it! It was a tangible memory that he could take with him, and no one would know what it meant. In his line of work souvenirs could prove to be deadly; Eliot knew that sounded melodramatic, but it didn't make it any less true. He'd seen people; well colleagues, he wouldn't call them friends, he'd seen groups track down his colleagues families and to put it kindly remove them from the picture.

Speaking of New Hampshire, Eliot snapped his fingers as he remembered something. It was about time to get the furnace serviced at the farm. When he got back into town, he needed to call Shelley and remind him to get Bob from up the road to clean and do the annual furnace servicing. Damn thing was temperamental enough without having something clogged, broken or dirty. Although, the hitter would give that furnace a lot of credit; it was almost seventy years old and still working.

Eliot glanced down at the directions that Tamika had given him on how to get to their farm. Hardison had been giving him grief about not having a GPS in the truck. But, the team hitter didn't want a tether. He'd had enough electronic leashes in his life; and had seen enough of them fail and bring some pretty major operations down because of stupid things like changes in cloud cover, or someone decided to play with remote control airplanes. Electronic things needed to be able to send and receive and if something screwed with that ability, well it screwed with you. So Eliot had a paper map, and printed emailed directions sitting on the seat next to him.

The map and the directions which Eliot had pretty much committed to memory were laying on top of a tattered paperback. It was "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy; it wasn't a particularly happy novel. This book was the written version of the nightmares Eliot saw when he slept. He'd read it and reread it. Like Ray's German Shepard, Petunia, "The Road" helped him work through what he saw in his mind. "The Road" discussed the apocalypse; but, not in the fancy way most books and movies showed it. This was a journey across America and it was both bleak and beautiful; but, the story gave Eliot the one thing that he needed to cope: It gave him hope. The story was about hope, hope for the future.

It gave him hope and comfort like Tamika and Petunia gave Ray.

**E/N**: Yes, the buttercream frosting recipe is real. It's my husband's favorite recipe. He bakes, I don't!


	2. Luxury of Friendship

**A/N**: Thank you to everyone for reading, reviewing, favoriting and following! It means so much to me that people spend their time to do the little things! **Floralisette**, **Shona1026**, and **WhiskeySkye** you all rock! **Gaben**, as always thank you for being my rocking beta; and putting up with my whining.

**Chapter 2: The Luxury of Friendship**

It had been one hell of day. Eliot had spent the day at the Veteran's Administration with Ray. It had been hell for both of them. For Ray it had been the number of people, the noise, the constant jostling, and being touched. The issue for the Leverage hitter had been the reminders; the reminders of Afghanistan, Iraq, and a few other places.

He was just waiting to get home. He'd found a little building near the brewpub that had been abandoned. With the help of a contractor, and Hardison, he now had a nice little loft over a garage workshop area. It still galled the Leverage hitter that he'd needed the hackers help to get around the zoning laws and get his building zoned dual use – industrial/residential. But, now he had an awesome two thousand square foot loft which overlooked his garage, woodworking area, and beer brewing test area. This testing area was pretty small; but, it was completely separate from the 'lab' Hardison had where he tested his fruity and weird concoctions. Eliot tended to stick more to the classics; Porter's and stouts in the winter, IPAs and Weizens in the summer.

They were now driving back towards the farm where Ray and Tamika lived and it was quiet for the first time all day. Ray had finally stopped shaking and was petting Petunia who was nestled around his ankles in the wheel well. Eliot couldn't remember a time he'd talked this much in one day! But, Tamika had said that talking and keeping him occupied kept the issues to a minimum. So he'd talked he'd talked about the fishing spot he'd found near where Sophie had taken the guy looking for truffles. He'd talked about the wooden door he was finishing and how the curving molding had been difficult to strip the layers of paint off it, then how the special sanding pads had made getting into the little grooves of the molding easier, and how the stain hadn't taken the way he'd wanted so he'd had to use four coats. And he had needed to use two separate colors of stain in the layers in order to get the door to blend together. They'd discussed the advantages of UV resistant polyurethanes versus the marine polyurethane, and which he should use because this was an exterior door which would get a lot of exposure to the elements.

Eliot talked all through lunch. A lunch where they'd both picked at the institutional food served in the cafeteria. They'd discussed the advantages and disadvantages of hydroponic versus organic lettuce. Well, Eliot had talked and Ray had pretty much grunted while trying to not throw up or start screaming. The hitter had discussed how the thirty-five day life cycle of hydroponic lettuce made it a very good choice for hydroponics; also you could control what it was exposed to. The downside was that you lost some of the flavor from the lettuce that was exposed to the elements.

The hitter had talked through the waiting period for the acupuncture clinic, where Ray was going to get the semi-permanent needles in his ears replaced. He'd discussed knitting, and how the occupational therapist had taught him to knit after he'd damaged his hand in a 'kitchen incident.' Eliot had talked his way through the garter stitch, dropping stitches, purling… And had been saved when a nice lady named Nancy who ran a fiber arts studio had saved him and began talking about meditative aspects of knitting, and how for beginners the total concentration required to get the stitches correct allowed one to empty their mind. Nancy had discussed the differences between knitting and purling. She'd shown them the simple scarf she was making for her son-in-law who was in his weekly group therapy meeting. It was a very simple basket weave, four purl stitches, and then four garter stitches, finally repeat that for four rows. And then reverse. It made the scarf look like a basket. Eliot had done similar things on cakes in buttercream frosting. On the top of that cake, which had been for a party for Sophie, he'd made dozens of roses in different shades of pink and red with leaves in varying shades of green. By the end of frosting that cake he'd gone through fifteen shades of pink and red, and five shades of green.

"Christ how did Hardison manage to talk so much!" the hitter thought to himself as the day finished at the acupuncture clinic and they walked over to the psych unit so that Ray could do his monthly check-in with his psychiatrist and make sure his medication was still working correctly. It was so bad he'd even started talking about the fiftieth anniversary specials that the hacker had made him watch; it had been a series of three hour shows with the unwieldy title of Doctor Who: Doctors Revisited. No matter what anyone said; Eliot would swear up and down that he didn't enjoy that stupid nerd show! Although, it did have some interesting plot twists, the Daleks were really pretty interesting. And they seemed quite plausible. Plus the Doctor's pretty sidekicks had very interesting personalities. Of course the Tardis thingy was a bit over the top; it had everything one ever needed in this tiny space; except no kitchen. And what time-traveling astronaut didn't need to eat?

They were in the waiting area for the head-shrinker. Eliot took a rather stern view towards most of the shrinking that went on; but, he did understand that the drugs they administered did alter brain chemistry for the better. And he grudgingly admitted that talk therapy did help a lot of people. But, it still didn't give him anything to talk about. He felt around the backpack he'd brought with him. It had a couple of magazines: Road and Track, and The Economist; but, they'd discussed both of them already. The only thing left was his mail; and like a drowning man looking for a life jacket Eliot started sorting through his mail: Bill, bill, computer advertisement (Hardison must be spamming him again), and a small box from Faith. Faith, a lifesaver! Eliot ripped open the box and a book fell out. Ray picked up the thin book with the awkward title of Introduction to the Use of Clustering in Adaptive Algorithms.

Ray had cocked an eyebrow at him. The idea of his military buddy enjoying a little light reading in some obscure math field didn't fit his perception of Eliot. Ray's foot stopped twitching as he read the back of the blue book. He understood about every other word; and not when they were grouped together. Below the description there was a picture of a woman in glasses with her biography next to the picture. MIT professor of mathematics and computer science and a whole list of awards, a very long list of awards! "Conquest?"

Eliot glared at him. "Friend."

"Friend?" Ray looked at the picture. "What did you save her from?" He'd known Eliot long enough to know his penchant for saving women and children that were in distress.

"Didn't." Eliot shrugged; he'd had one night of sex with Faith. Right before they'd moved to Portland. He hadn't been back; but, he'd had Shelley check in on her occasionally. "She's friends with Hardison, this is for him."

Ray flipped the book open and read the acknowledgements out-loud. "_Leverage. Power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions, etc. I need to say thank you to Cora who taught me that family is not necessarily that which you are born into; but, that which finds you. Alec, Cora, Eliot, Nate, Parker, and Sophie: Thank you, thank you for more than you know. You all have given me a family to call my own. A family which gives and gives. Thank you for accepting me as I am; and showing me how to be better. Keep doing good works, and I hope this helps you all in some small way."_

Eliot blushed as Ray read the short inscription.

"Well, I'd say you rescued her from something."

"Nope." The hitter shook his head.

"The man doth protest too much, methinks."

"Butchering Hamlet won't get you too far." Eliot glared at his old friend who just started laughing. "Isn't it time for your appointment?"

"Ohh… Eliot!" Petunia found this interesting enough to look up the two men and grumbled deep in her throat. To the hitter it sounded like she was bored; Ray just petted her on the head.

"You sound like a high school girl." Eliot growled at the man who was one of his oldest friends.

"And… You're… You're…"

"Saved by the bell!" Eliot watched as a group streamed out of the therapy room. "I think they're ready for you."

"Looks like." Ray grunted; the mischievous light in his eyes dimming a little. He hated his talk therapy group, even as a recognized that it did him good. It was nice to know that he wasn't alone in all of these. So, he got up and with Petunia walked into the therapy room.

Eliot glanced over at where Ray sat sleeping in his truck. Gawd, it had been a horrid day! But, it was nice to know that he had the luxury of being able to take a day off to spend it with an old friend like Ray.

**E/N**: A Clustering Framework to Build Focused Web Crawlers for Automatic Extraction of Cultural Information by George E. Tsekouras, Damianos Gavalaas, Stefanos Filios, Antonios D Niros, and George Bafaloukas is a real paper and is where I got the idea for the book Faith wrote. And these guys deserve credit because dang, this stuff is only a little bit dense.


End file.
